from the sorry-about-that dept

A little over a week after Kaspersky's anti-virus software declared Windows Explorer was a virus, it appears that McAfee has had its own mistake, as an anti-virus update from the company started warning people to stay away from a bunch of popular sites, including ESPN, Friendster and Ars Technica. McAfee later admitted that it was a mistake on its end, but it seems that we're seeing these kinds of false positives on a fairly frequent basis these days. It's yet another sign that things need to change in how security software works -- but instead of real advances, it still seems like firms are bogged down with things like pointless patent battles.

from the not-everyone-would-disagree dept

You can already hear the Apple and Linux fans snickering about this one, but security software firm Kaspersky accidentally classified Windows Explorer as a virus to be quarantined earlier this week. Explorer.exe, of course, is pretty crucial for doing just about anything in Windows, so it probably didn't go over so well with the folks impacted by it. Amusingly, as the article notes, Kaspersky made fun of Microsoft earlier this year when Microsoft's own anti-virus offering quarantined or deleted Microsoft Outlook files. And, of course, last year we also had a story about how Kaspersky's software flagged Microsoft's own anti-virus software as a virus as well. In other words... these anti-virus programs still have some kinks to work out.